Vegetarian Foodie or just Foodie?

I'm a foodie. This isn't an admission akin to an AA meeting, it's really more a statement of fact. Also, I'm not going to stop like they do. It's a way of life I intend to carry with me forever.

I have been a foodie since I was very young. Maybe since the first time I sat on the kitchen counter in our house in Los Lunas, aged 11 or 12, with a hand mixer, the salt shaker and 2 cups of whole milk, trying to whip up some fresh butter. It worked eventually but it was a long morning. I don't remeber why I started, or when I decided that my whipping milk was going to become butter. I vaguely recall my mom telling me how to do it and that I just had to be patient, but I don't know why I started or what my inspiration was. Maybe it was my mom. All I really remember was the realization, very suddently after about 45 minutes (well, it could have been 20 minutes or 90 minutes, time wasn't really my forte at that age), the milk clumped.

If that wasn't my first foodie moment it could have been any of a number of our family-coined "Gourmet Nights" when Gary, Kathy, Amber and Timmy would come over (or we go there) to make pasta from scratch, or ceviche, or sausage, or pizza, or just sopapillas... or any number of a hundred different European dishes and sides we experimented with from about 1984 until ours went the way of the American households in the eighties and nineties.

I have more fond memories of those nights than I can recount in any single sitting. I even remeber thinking that it would be a tradition that we'd keep up with our own kids when we were parents. It may have been a bold thought for a 8,9,10... year old, but I never thought I'd leave Albuquerque and I always knew that whatever life would bring, food and family would be front and center.

Those gourmet nights represent many defining moments for me -- like the first time I called G.E. Smith (former, and greatest, leader of the Saturday Night Live Band) Mr. Forehead; the first time we beat the original Zelda on the NES (it was never just one of us, it was always all four of us, even when I was the one with the controller); I remember the first time we crancked a pasta wheel vice gripped to the cutting board, hanging doughy sun dried tomato (before you could buy sun dried tomatoes in stores) noodles from the dowel tree; I remember pizzas baked on homemade dough so full of toppings that a single piece would fill me to the brim... though we had three or four more pizzas coming (this was before my re-education as a pizza minimalist). The gist of this is that these nights shaped my view of the place of food in our lives, as much as they shaped my sense of what family was, as much as they shaped what made a good SNL episode or good ambient music on the stereo (I recall a lot of James Taylor and Manhattan Transfer, though I prefer Afro Cuban or Zydeco today).

According to Wikipedia (and Nicole Weston):

...foodies differ from gourmets in that gourmets are epicures of refined taste who may or may not be professionals in the food industry, whereas foodies are amateurs who simply love food for consumption, study, preparation, and news. Gourmets simply want to eat the best food, whereas foodies want to learn everything about food, both the best and the ordinary, and about the science, industry, and personalities surrounding food. For this reason, foodies are sometimes viewed as obsessively interested in all things culinary.

I'll take that. I might quibble with "obsessively" and there was a time when I'd have argued that I was actually a gourmet -- or, affectedly, a "gourmand." But I'm over that. I'm a fan. An amateur, a voyeur, a... foodie. I can dig.

In fact, the more I think about my weeks and my weekends, my off hour experiments and in what I choose to dabble, it's pretty much exclusively about food: the growth, procurement, preparation and consumption of food. And I like it. I love it in fact. It's one of the few things about which I would say I'm passionate. I like talking about it, reading about it, and knowing about others who enjoy the same. And of course, the sampling.

And that's gotten me to thinking recently about my vegetarianism. I know what you're thinking: "How can a true foodie be a vegetarian?" I'm not going to answer that. But what I will say is that there was a time a few years ago when I actually started to get tired of the foodie culture. Every dish -- even today, look and you'll see -- at least in America foodie culture -- is basically a meat and one or two sides that are very frequently meat-fat or even actually meat-infused. It got to a point where I was eating good food all the time, but it was all meat. Whether poultry/game, pork, beef, lamb, etc. How good a cook are you when all you cook are meat dishes? And that's the average American foodie. Meat -- they'll call it a protein but it's never not meat -- and some green or starch.

Enter vegetarianism, and limits that started to really challenge me. I go back to the point about protein=meat for most foodies. (And you may say, no, sometimes it's fish... well, that's meat too. Fish meat. Leave it at that.) How do you do a featured dish on a menu when it's not meat? Is it just a bunch of side dishes? If you are a vegetarian and you end up at most American chain restaurants with your omni family, yes. Your dinner will be a salad (hold the chicken or salmon) and a bunch of sides. And probably some bread... really bad (and bad for you) bleached flour, American restaurant bread. Think Applebees.

My first real 4-star vegetarian dining experience was at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. It's an institution as a 4-star restaurant, let alone a vegetarian one. And it taught me a few things about main courses. They are gratins, they are phyllo pockets, they are savory pastries and rissottos, and grains of all types, and curries and confits... and you know what? They are never, tofu.

Do you hear that Omnis who are planning on having your vegetarian friends over for dinner? Vegetarians don't eat Tofu instead of meat. In fact, I know a great many vegetarians who don't like tofu one bit. Nor do they particularly like seitan or tempeh. They like vegetables and breads and curries and sauces and grains... they are thinking so far outside the box when it comes to dinner that basing an entire meal around a turkey or a pork chop sounds so pedestrian that even the best cut of meat you've ever had sounds... well, like you aren't even trying.

And that's when I started to think about limits and boundaries and what really pushed me past stagnation regarding my own foodieness. It's like you suddenly have to get around town making only right turns. You find it tricky at first, but then, you realize that you're saving gas and getting places quicker, and taking less risk to yourself and others because right turns are so much simpler than waiting for left turns. And that's exactly why UPS designs all its routes with right turns in mind -- less time waiting for arrows or lights, fewer opportunities to get hit while crossing traffic, and greater ease for everyone involved by keeping that big truck in the right lane.

All of a sudden, I couldn't cheat and just make a left turn -- a hamburger -- whenever I wanted to. I had to think about it. I had to start going to farmer's markets to get better, fresher ingredients. I had to start thinking about a meal a day or so ahead of time in case I needed to soak the beans, and even earlier if I wanted to sprout them. I started having to use less salt and fewer spices. I started to be able to rely on the flavor of seasonal food, and to explore other native cuisines and dig into the history of those cultures. I also started exploring using other natural fats and proteins like nuts and legumes. In all, because of vegetarianism, I can use so many more ingredients effectively, and I'm so much more knowledgeable about food, that I am starting to live up to my foodie label. And if pressed, I could still make a mean brisket. It's not rocket science... It's not even like baking, let alone cheese making or canning, which are actually more akin to chemistry and practically, alchemy.

Another thing happened. I started losing weight and odd as it sounds... well, suffice to say, my overall constitution improved. And I eat more! I enjoy cheeses and whole dairy now, whereas I avoided them before because of the extra fat.

I don't intend for this to become a manifesto against an omni diet, just to stress that vegetarianism broadend my vision of food, main courses and sides, meals and the composition of a well-rounded week's diet beyond what nearly any of my friends currently enjoy. And that it did so by making me healthier, more fit (or more able to get retain fitness), and smarter about food in nearly every sense.

I'm still an amature. I still just dabble. I just do it better. And I'm not a vegetarin foodie. I'm a foodie. And a damn good one.